If the interpretation of the economic depression of the Thirties is currently far from being shared, the role of the primary sector is no less controversial. It is therefore important to understand to what extent the agricultural sector has been involved in most of the large-scale crises in the modern industrial world and whether it has had a significant or fundamental role in triggering past and present depressions. Bearing this in mind, the general aim of the proposed session is to stimulate a debate on the role of the agricultural sector in provoking or aggravating large-scale modern depressions, with specific reference to the Great Crisis of the 1930s and how it is associated with the dynamics of primary sector. This will be achieved by means of a comparative and multi-level international, national or local analysis, with a view to understanding the long-term global and structural transformations involved in extended recessions.

ORGANIZER(S):

Gérard Béaur, CNRS & EHESS, CRH & GRDI AAA

Francesco Chiapparino, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona

DISCUSSANT(S):Price Fishback, University of Arizona

PAPERS

– First Half

Agriculture crisis and economic crisis in the long run and with a comparative view (1680-1929, France-Italy, USA, UK

Gérard Béaur, CNRS & EHESS, CRH & GRDI AAA

The Great Depression as Transition of the Global Food Regime?

Ernst Langthaler, Johannes Kepler University Linz

The role of banks and monetary policy in Australia and Canada in the 1930s Depression

Jocelyn Pixley, Macquarie University

Structural Change and Deep Downturns: The U.S. Farm Sector in the Great Depression

Christopher Boone, Cornell University

Agriculture, inter-war crisis, and the manifold performances of “rural Italies” in the recession

Francesco Chiapparino,Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona

Gabriele Morettini, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona

– Second Half

From boom to burst: Argentine primary sector, 1900s-1930s

Julio Djenderedjian, Universidad de Buenos Aires, CONICET

Juan Luis Martiren, Universidad Buenos Aires/CONICET

The 1929 crisis and the battle of the two wheats in Italy, between domestic and international markets

Niccolò Mignemi, Expostdoc Ecole Française de Rome

Market regulation and structural policies under the Spanish 2nd Republic: the crises of the 1930s and agriculture

Juan Pan-Montojo,Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

The problem of the wheat and the political answers to the agricultural crisis in France of the 1930s

Alain Chatriot, SciencesPo

Agricultural crisis in Mexico at the first phase of globalization, 1870-1929

Focusing mainly on the creation, transmission and circulation of expertise in the rural universe from Europe to South America, but also brought from Latin American colonies into European Rural History between the 17th and 20th centuries, the panel will discuss the internationalization of agricultural knowledge.

Observation, experience, transmission and diffusion of knowledge through theoretical media become cross-referenced within the circulation of expertise conveyed by praxis. Some contexts are more or less receptive to innovation, and certain needs might facilitate the transmission and circulation of technical knowledge. This panel takes stock of the state of the debate on production and circulation of agricultural knowledge, to offer new conceptual tools and approaches to the study of agricultural techniques and literacy in America, stressing the central role played by European laws, theoretical knowledge and techniques.

It is our goal to understand the way individuals who lived in distant rural areas of Latin America between the 17th and 20th centuries, acted. Taking into consideration that some had information on law issues while their neighbors could not read or write. Key questions include: How were those expertise transmitted with such precision and permanence? Through which kind of routes knowledge circulated and who were the main actors? How was this knowledge delivered and used in the Americas? Furthermore, in the 19th century many nations were being born in South America with different ideologies among them, although influenced by Napoleon code and colonial laws. Thus, how, and with what goals and criteria, have circulated laws and norms created in such different contexts?

We seek to deepen the European and extra-European knowledge meeting promoted by ecological imperialism which contributed to transform the model center-periphery used by the History of Sciences. Colonial science has proved to be a hybrid process between European and indigene praxis instead of being the extension of the European model.

Overseas colonies meant for some authors, global labs where the European scientists could confirm their theories. In examining these questions the panel will engage considerations of both the circulation and acquisition of agricultural knowledge, laws, techniques and irrigation systems in the New World, and the obstacles and constraints to agricultural knowledge transfer.

INDIVIDUAL PAPER proposals must include (1) a 200 – 300-word abstract, and (2) a one-page biographical sketch. Abstracts should include the author’s name and email address, a short descriptive title of the paper, a concise statement of the thesis, a brief discussion of the sources, and a summary of the major conclusions.

Leuven, Belgium

The forthcoming conference will take place in Leuven (Belgium) from Monday 11 to Thursday 14 September 2017. The organisation is in the hands of ICAG (the Interfaculty Center for Agrarian History, University of Leuven), in collaboration with CORN (Comparative Rural History Network).

The EURHO conferences aim at promoting the exchange of recent research results and fostering co-operation between scholars engaged in the history of rural Europe and of its interaction with other parts of the world, from ancient times up to the present. Consequently the conference in Leuven will be open to all interesting proposals within a broad range of themes and covering different historical periods and regions.

Rural history, indeed, has no clear spatial borders, nor precise time frames. It is a multifaceted research field that stretches from the production of foodstuffs, feed, fibres and flowers, to food processing and consumption; from productive land use to tourism in the countryside; from agricultural technology to village life. Rurality is in fact an analytical category, at the crossroads of economic and social, political and cultural, anthropological and environmental history. And far from presenting a univocal story about the evolution from local tradition to global modernity, the history of the rural world deals with unequal constructions of food availability, power, wealth, gender and social well-being. In this sense, the history of the rural past shows many similarities with the current world food problem and the problem of rural development.

For this third EURHO conference, we encourage all participants to present their newest and most promising research. We particularly welcome papers which introduce unknown source material, develop new concepts or methods, and explore the connections between rural history and related research fields via a comparative, multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approach. The keynote papers will offer an opportunity to rural historians for critical self-reflection regarding their own research in relationship to adjacent disciplines and current societal debates.